Brody
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brody (Ukrainian: Броди, Polish: Brody, Russian: Броды, Yiddish: בּראָד, translit. Brod) is a city in the Lviv Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Brodivskyi Raion (district), and is located in the valley of the upper Styr River, approximately 90 kilometres northeast of the oblast capital, Lviv. As of 2004, its population is 23,239.
Brody is the junction place of the Druzhba and Odessa-Brody oil pipelines.
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[edit] History
The first mention of a settlement on the site of Brody is dated 1084 (Instructions by Volodymyr Monomach). It is believed to have been destroyed by Batu Khan in 1241.
From 1441 Brody was property of different feudal families (Jan Sieniński, from 1511 - Kamieniecki).
Brody was granted Magdeburg rights and city status in 1546. At this time it was known under the name Lubicz (Любич, Polish: Lubicz) that gave name to the Lubicz Coat of Arms of the owner, Stanisław Żółkiewski (not to be confused with Lubech, Lubecz).
From 1629, the city became the property of Stanisław Koniecpolski, who transformed it into a fortress (1630-1635). In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky was unable to capture it for about 8 weeks. The fortress was designed by the French military engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan.
Since the 17th century, the city was populated not only by Ukrainians and Poles, but with a significant number of Jews (70% of the town's population), Armenians, Greeks and Scots.[citation needed]
In 1704 Brody was purchased by Potocki family. In 1734 fortress was destroyed by Russian troops and rebuilt again by Stanisław Potocki in baroque style. In 1772 Brody became a part of Habsburg Empire (from 1804 - Austrian Empire). In 1812 Wincenty Potocki was forced by the Austrian government to remove the city's fortifications.
A crossroads and a Jewish trade center in the nineteenth century, the city is considered to be one of the shtetls. It was particularly famous for the Brodersänger or Broder singers, who were among the first to publicly perform Yiddish songs outside of Purim plays and wedding parties.
The promulgation of the May Laws, and the massive exodus of Russian Jews which was its result, took the leaders of Western Jewry completely by surprise. Throughout 1881, hundreds of immigrants… kept arriving in Brody daily. Their arrival placed Austrian and German coreligionists in a quandary… the comfortable middle-class Jewish community of Central and Western Europe looked instinctively to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the world's largest and most respected Jewish philanthropic agency, to bring order out of chaos, to cope with the huge influx of newcomers. (Howard M. Sachar)
The town was the site of heavy destruction by both Polish and Russian forces in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, and is described extensively in stories of the Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel. After the conflict, it became part of Second Polish Republic and was located in the Tarnopol Voivodeship. Brody was an important military base, with the Kresowa Cavalry Brigade headquarters established there.
In September 1939 after the Polish defeat in World War II, Brody was occupied by the Red Army following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Between June 26 and June 30, 1941 a tank battle was fought nearby between the German 1st Panzer Army and 5 Soviet Mechanized Corps with heavy losses on both sides. In December 1942 the German occupiers forced the Jewish population to resettle in a ghetto inside the town. Most of the prewar population of 9000 Jewish inhabitants died either in the concentration camps, through starvation, forced labour or were shot to death. During July-August 1944, Brody and the nearby areas saw the battles of the strategically important Lvov-Sandomierz Operation (a.k.a. Brodovkiy Kotel) where the Soviet army successfully encircled and destroyed German forces.
During the Cold War, Brody air base served Soviet Air Force regiments.
The Brody museum of history and district ethnography was founded in 2001.
[edit] Famous Jews associated with Brody
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- Adolph Baller, pianist
- Iuliu Barasch, physician
- Berl Broder (Berl Margulis), singer
- Oscar Chajes, chess player
- Zvi Hirsch Chajes, rabbi and talmudist
- Hans Kelsen (father was born there)
- Nachman Krochmal, philosopher
- Max Margules, meteorologist
- Jacques Mieses (parents from Brody; he was born in Leipzig
- Amalia Nathansohn-Freud (1835–1930), mother of Sigmund Freud
- Joseph Ludwig Raabe, mathematician
- Jakob Rosanes, mathematician
- Joseph Roth (1894-1939), writer
- Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, chess player. See German-language article.
- Israel Zolli, former Chief Rabbi of Rome who converted to Catholicism
[edit] Nearby towns
[edit] References
- Howard M. Sachar, The Course of modern Jewish history. Vintage Books (a division of Random House) Chapter 15
[edit] External links
- Brody in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
- (Ukrainian) Brody site
- (English) ShtetLinks Site for Brody
- (German) Brody - Броди - בראד
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